In the latest episode of the multi-cloud podcast, Eric Neilsen and David Jasso speak with Jeff Eberhard of VMware Cloud Solutions about the top issues organizations face when re-platforming apps for public cloud – and, more importantly, how to solve them.
How to Overcome the Biggest Impediment to Successful Cloud Migration (Multi-Cloud Podcast Roundup)
In the latest instalment of our podcast, Eric Neilsen (@ericnipro) and I (@david7494) talk with Jeff Eberhard about the biggest issues organizations face when re-platforming an application running in their data center to a hyper-scaler public cloud like AWS, Azure, or Google.
As a Senior Engineering Manager working on VMware Cloud Solutions, a big part of Jeff’s job is working closely with customers that are looking to move applications deployed on VMware cloud technologies in the data center to AWS. It was great to tap into his deep expertise on the topic of cloud migration.
Below are the links to the latest podcast:
Multi-Cloud Series Playlist on SoundCloud
App to Infrastructure Dependencies
During our discussion, we took a close look at the issues arising from application to infrastructure dependencies. In particular, the significant number of engineering hours it takes to change the application so that it performs adequately in the new environment.
Taneja Group estimates that an average of 10 hours of engineering effort is needed to “tinker” with each and every workload that is moving from a VMware-based environment to a native environment of a hyper-scaler public cloud. Yet 10 hours is just an average – the amount of effort can vary widely from workload to workload, and it can be hard to estimate in advance. Sometimes, it takes much longer.
It’s difficult to make the business case to divert scarce development resources away from building net new functionality that the business may desperately need – merely to write new code to support an app that is running just fine. As a consequence, many organizations continue to run applications in the data center even though they would prefer to move the app to the cloud.
Top Issues Impacting Re-platforming
In our discussion with Jeff, we also explored other issues teams run into when they look at re-platforming apps from the data center to a hyper-scaler cloud. These include making changes to the application to address storage, high availability, networking and security concerns. In addition, there are often changes that must be made to how application elements are licensed and how teams manage the application environment given the differences between the on-premise and public cloud.
To wrap up the podcast, we discussed how leveraging a solution like VMware Cloud on AWS enables teams to bypass all of these problems – there’s no refactoring or re-platforming required.
With VMware Cloud on AWS, you simply run the same VMware environment you have on-premise in a hyper-scaler cloud. So, when the application looks down it sees the exact same infrastructure that it saw in the data center. This also means you get to leverage the same operating model you were running in the data center.
We hope you enjoy the podcast. To learn more about VMware Cloud on AWS, you can find a ton of great content online. As always, we welcome your thoughts on the topic or the podcast.
Looking to better understand VMware’s unique approach to multi-cloud architecture? Get the definitive guide here.
